Five Reasons Why Halloween Won't Be the Cannapocalypse for Trick-or-Treaters

Every single person who's been spreading the rumor that because recreational cannabis is now legal in some places, trick-or-treating kids will suddenly be loaded with THC-infused edibles needs to sit down, shut up, quit scaring the fuck out of everyone, and just do what they would normally do on Halloween. Carve some pumpkins, bake those cheap Pillsbury sugar cookies, buy a few bags of Hershey's minis to give out, Netflix a Tim Burton movie made prior to 1994 -- and ignore the constant stream of fake news about imaginary villains getting your tots baked. Because it's not going to happen.

Here are five reasons why Halloween won't be the cannapocalypse for trick-or-treating children. Trust me: The only thing that the shorties will be getting wasted on this year is sugar. You know, like every other year.

5) Using basic common sense with Halloween candy will work the same way this year as it does every year.

Even semi-responsible parents will at least have a look-see at their kids' Halloween candy -- if only to determine what they want to steal. Common sense dictates that you toss unwrapped sweets (dirty, germy yuck), anything of the homemade-baked-goods variety (so no chance of getting cookies, brownies or rice Krispies treats laced with anything) and candies that look homemade (crinkly wax paper wrappings are a dead giveaway). This is true whether you're worried about cat hair or cannabis.

A basic seek-and-destroy mission to make damn sure your little angels aren't getting anything freaky is something parents should be doing anyway, on the off-chance that some random bite of weed/bleach/Drano-laced treat ends up where it shouldn't.

All the hyper-spazz crazy-making the last few weeks about THC candy bars looking like name-brand candy bars has taken paranoia to a whole new level. Yes, some cannabis companies do make bars with punny names like "Dabby Patties," "Monkey Bars," "Hashee's" and "Ganja Joys," but the fake papers are easy for anyone with a junior-high level of education to spot. And if they can't, the courts will help. A Colorado company just settled a case with Hershey's by promising to clean up any confusion with future candies.

Should an infused bar somehow wind up in a bag, any parents will take one look at the wrapper, see that it contains THC and toss it...or keep it for themselves.

3. Halloween candy urban myths are not new -- this is just the latest.

Pull up a seat 'round the campfire, so that I can tell you some scary ghost stories. Tainted or tampered candy rumors have been around since before I was hatched into the world; some of the best ones involve candies soaked in LSD, laced with Tylenol or adulterated with rat poison, bug spray, laundry soap, ground glass, pencil shavings, feces, blood, oxycontin or pet food. Then there are the really good stories about Halloween goodies stuffed with glass shards, sewing needles, syringes, ballpoint pens, chicken bones, bottle caps, paper clips, pins, wires and, of course, razor blades.

A decade from now people may remember this year as ground zero for all the nutty anecdotes about pot-tainted Halloween candy, and how they know the stories were real because their sister's boyfriend's friend's mother's dry cleaner's cousin's second husband heard them on Facebook, so they must be true.

For more reasons why kids won't be given massive amounts of free edibles on Halloween, read on.

2. Anti-marijuana crusaders use Halloween to bitch, complain and fear-monger.

The anti-cannabis crowd spends the entire year telling everyone how much weed sucks -- but Halloween is peak performance season because it gives the pot-nannies the best gimmicks to use on petrified parents. Mustache-twirling drug-vigilantes have set up massive command centers in major suburban areas, and are ready to target every kid dressed in a Frozen costume in their dastardly plan to get random kids high on THC-infused gummy bears, because Dr. Evil said so, or something like that. Look, catering to parents' irrational fears that their little love-muffins are gonna end up in the front row of a Phish concert can be an effective way to make children think the world is worse than it really is, but the Halloween caldron-stirring by paranoid parentals is a mean trick to play on kids who deserve a scary treat or two one night a year.

So stop scaring the hell out of parents so they'll stop scaring the hell out of their poor kids -- or just look like even bigger dumbasses on November 1 after nothing happens.

William Breathes

1. Edibles are expensive -- ain't nobody gonna waste money on that.

This may come as a shocker, but marijuana-infused edibles are not cheap. In fact, whether medical or recreational, they are expensive as all fucker-doodle, and you could buy a month's worth of regular candy with the money that would buy a few days' worth of infused candy. I have read many of the recent articles warning parents about their trick-or-treaters getting bags full of weed candy, and two things are apparent. 1)There isn't an epidemic of this happening (aside from a few random cases of idiots leaving their edibles laying around for their kiddos to find) and 2) The bulk of the comments under each article contain the following phrase in some variant form: "That shit is expensive! Who would spend that kind of money to pull a dumbassed, boner prank like that?"

Who indeed?

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How about nobody who isn't already a jacked-up fuckbag in the first place? Marijuana aficionados are quite fond of their edibles, and medical patients need theirs to eat, sleep and be pain-free. Ain't nobody in their right minds gonna give their expensive edibles away to a bunch of beggy kids -- no matter how cool their costumes are.